So I had fifteen minutes to kill yesterday afternoon before picking up my children from school, so I stopped in at Hooked on Books. Partly because it has a restroom. But, as you know, I always find something on their sale book racks. Today, they were indoors because of the weather. But I found a couple.
I might have mentioned before that Hooked on Books has the best selection of John D. MacDonald paperbacks in the Midwest. But that was eleven years ago. Now, they have two paper copies of Barrier Island, and I have a lifetime of regret that I did not pick them up when I could.
At any rate, I got a couple sale books.
I got:
- Hardball: Aryan Legion, the second volume in a paperback series I’d never heard of. I am pretty sure the Aryan Legion are the bad guys here, and this is not further evidence that this is a Nazi-sympathizing blog. Although linking to it with the hyperlink text “Nazi-sympathizing blog” is probably not helping my case with the search algorithms.
- Wheland and Carwin the Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown. I recognized the Penguin Classics spine but never heard of the book. I wonder if it’s really a classic, or just something that modern English professors want to include on their syllabi. I guess I’ll find out someday.
- A Question of Accuracy, something in a series called Exploring Mathematics. It might be a children’s book, but if it’s a children’s book from sixty or seventy years ago, it will be something to challenge modern adults.
- Proud to be Right, a collection of conservative voices of the next generation. Which might be two generations ago by the speed of Internet intellectual fads.
- The Backward Shadow by Lynne Reid Banks, which is a sequel to the novel The L Shaped Room. Which I had seen recently, so I thought I had it on my shelves. Further reflection indicates that this book was one I bought in my eBay selling days, and that I still have a picture of it from the same that I use as test data from time to time on one of my contracts. So I’ve seen the book cover, but I no longer own the book. But I just bought the sequel.
- From Mind to Market by Roger D. Blackwell. It’s a book about rethinking logistics. I like to buy industry-specific books sometimes, but apparently I like to read them less. The guy behind the counter couldn’t find the discounted price on it, so he asked me to verify that it was a sale book. I pointed out that it had a red dot on the spine, and he said they’d never done that. But the young man has only been there three years. I’ve been coming to Hooked on Books for over 20 years (!) since my beautiful wife and I were but dating. The kid behind the counter was probably even born then.
They were sale books, so I spent about $7.50. It’s almost worth it for the story about the last book alone.
